Hello Andrew, Welcome to Open Mind GUFO Radio. I'm your host Alejandro Rojas, and I am speaking with Martin. Northeaster willis because you have survived several northeasters. What is a northeaster. It's just basically a weather pattern. It kind of goes, you know, like across sort of from west to east, and then it kind of heads north and for some reason it just picks
up a lot of wind. And I don't know if it has to do with currents or but it hits the coastal areas and you know, we've had forty mile an hour winds and snow coming down sideways and I still have about three feet in my yard. Wow, I'm ready for spring and I'm tired of my even my tractor doesn't want to plow snow anymore. Yeah, wants
to break down. That sounds awful. I'm in a chili place right now as well, and Boisy Boisy, which isn't as bad as where you are, but it's still for me for an Arizona, and it's pretty chilly out here. It's snowed yesterday. I'm here for something called tree Fort, which is a music festival and there's a portion of it because they're trying to be like south By Southwest where they have different talks going on as well. And so I was part of what's called hack for It because they have food for
It, yoga, fort, ale Fort, these different forts. I was at hack Fort, which is about tech. So I was brought in to talk about tech writing writing stories with some of my fellow you know writers who sometimes I travel with at these press junkets and stuff. And then I also got to do a panel because they asked me what would be another good panel you think, and I said, well, I do UFOs and paranormal maybe the tech of that, and they were like, oh, that sounds awesome.
So I brought Ben and Mark D'Antonio, Ben Hampson marked Antonio out. So we had a panel about UFOs and we got a little bit into other paranormal and the tech that is used in it, including you know, the Flaer videos in the latest DoD revelation. And the place was packed. It was like we had standing room only. It was by far the most popular of all of the talks they had at Hackport. Wow that's awesome. Yeoh, so that was really cool. I bet it was, Uh, now,
did they actually record this or a nup job? What's just there? They didn't record it? I think, yeah, no, it did get recorded. But if you go to Mark d'antonio's facebook, he did live stream us doing a podcast on stage out at the festival area. Huh so let's post it on his Facebook page. Yeah, that's posted on his Facebook page.
And that's what my interview is. So Mark, Ben, myself and Karen did a roundtable during the conference in the side room where they had kind of their tables, like they had different vendors and stuff, and so that's what the interview is today. Oh oh, that's great. So we're talking to you, we're talking to UFOs about kind of how Hackport went, and then also, you know about the younger generation and how you know, this younger dealing with them is different because this event is you know, kind of
mostly a twenty something hipster's kind of thing. So and so that was great to see the think building our ideas on you know, how to reach out to that group. And then also I get Ben and Mark's impressions and ideas around this, you know, latest DoD news because I haven't talked to them on the podcast since that all went down, Well, I'll be interested to hear what especially Mark has to say about the latest film. Yeah, he
always has his opinions. Yeah, and last time I spoke to him, he said he's still waiting to see a real UFO film or a picture. Yeah, you're right, but you know, like he says, you know, he's looking for something that stands on its own, which is really difficult.
And like you and I have talked about, photos and videos alone don't make it a good case typically, right, Often, even though something anecdotally may have been reported as something strange, on camera doesn't look like anything unusual, so, which you know, is kind of the same problem with these latest DoD kind of things. So so yeah, it's a lot of fun. Wow. Great, So let's get into the news. How about that?
All right, let's segue into the news. Well, I'd like to talk about they finally figured out what was going on with the little at a comma, you know, they so called alien you know, miniature skeleton mm hmm, you know in serious, serious, the serious movie. You know, it's uh, it is a very unusual, you know, granted, you know, you go back and you watch that film and his pictures all
over the internet. There's also I think Serious is on Netflix, and it seems like it was anyway, so you know, got a lot of exposure as and it did, you know, basically came out in the movie after Gary Nolan did some work on it that it was you know, most likely human or I think I think he actually said in the movie it was definitely.
They cut that out of the movie and and but you know, he said that in several interviews, including interviews with myself, and I kind of I interviewed Greer about that, and Grier kept saying, no, no, that's not what he's saying. And I was like, yes, yes, this is exactly what he's saying. And no, I mean he's saying it very clearly. In fact, I told him, well, what do you say to those people who And he's very nice and he says he likes Greary,
likes that he does the work that he does. But he was like, no, this is human. If anybody else can show me some data that says otherwise, that's great, but my DNA testing shows that this thing's definitely human. I like Gary. I actually had some interaction with him myself. He liked he has a good sense of humor because he loved it. I don't know if you remember this. I did a karaoke song about the little at a Comma Baby. Yeah, he liked that. He liked it.
He thought it was a riot. That's surprising because he's seems to be really wanting to stay away from any controversy or any criticisms of anyone. And of course, sure karaoke atching was was not flattering towards career in particular. Yeah, it wasn't too good. That's hilarious because it was funny. That was and it's so funny you did that well, yeah, if you could find it on YouTube, I don't know how the heck you find it.
That's cool that it turns out he saw And for people who don't know, Gary Nolan is a stand He works at Stanford and you know he's an expert when it comes to DNA, and he is also part of the Stars. He's a consultant for them as well. Oh that's right. I forgot about that part that he was part of that. Yeah, he's a microbiologist, professor in microbiology and immunology at Stanford. Great background, he said. Even though it was human, it still had some anomalies that they couldn't explain,
and so I guess this is probably where you're going to pick up. Yeah. Yeah, So you know, it was compared to human and primate genomes and determined to a human female, probably a fetus with a Chilean ancestry. Although the dating initially estimated the bone age of the skeleton was between six and eight years, I remember that. But researchers found that there remains had a rare bone aging disorder that made them seem older than the person they actually belonged
to. So at first eight percent of the DA DNA did not match with human DNA. Now researchers were able to That was because it was a degraded sample, and now they have an improved analysis and it matched up to ninety eight percent. So basically they go into the that was there's actually a paper published on this, and I think there's fourteen people involved a lot of people really got into this. There was doctor ATel Butte and he's he studied it.
There was Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg and he was a professor. Anyway, they all got involved in, you know, really looking at this and the mutations and deformities. There's skeletal dysplasia known as dwarf ism. That's all part of it. Yeah. I think they said they found nine different isn't it nine different kind of diseases or mutations that this thing had. So that's why it was so strange. Yeah, I had like the ribs issue and
the joints and the elongated skull and all that. Well, they think there is a possibility this is just speculation that it might have might have had to do something with nitrate, the nitrate minds and exposure to that and you know, through the parents, you know, I mean ahead of it, so it could have something to do with that. But anyway, I thought it was interesting they finally came out with, you know, it's a it's a
female. It is probably you know, just a fetus and just the aging, you know, because that's what I think threw everyone off, was that it seemed to be six to eight years old. And now they've they figured that part of it out. Yeah. So I think it's what's interesting about this story too, is that it's gotten all over the place, so national geographic. I think was at least for me, the first I saw it to the stars actually has a posting of an article written by Gary Nolan,
so you can hear from him directly on that to the stars. And then there's several other articles in mainstream news going on about it. And what's interesting, at least from the National Geographic is is I guess they showed doctor this information and they asked him, you know, they well, they showed him the information, the results to show a look, it actually was a human and uh fetus and with it they just had a lot of deformities. And he said, nope, I still think it's an alien. Oh my goodness.
I know. Well he should sounds like him and Heimio to get together. Yeah. I don't know how you could call yourself a researcher if you're just going to ignore. And he's the one who got Nolan Nolan is in his documentary, like you mentioned, serious it was. You know, he said he would stand by the results that Nolan came up with, and that's turning out to be completely untrue that he's not standing by Nolan's results, and
that's unfortunate. Yeah, and it points to a growing concern many of us have that doctor Greer's motivations in this field might not be you know, to actually discover the truth, but perhaps to perpetuate what has become a big business for him. I don't know what other reasoning he may have, or he maybe just wants to believe so badly. I'm not sure what it is.
I shouldn't make accusations, but it's just unfortunate because he's got a lot of followers, and it would be great if, you know, stuck to the truth, because I'm sure there's interesting things to be discovered. Yeah, without this, I think unacknowledged. That latest movie by him actually brought this into it as well, a little bit from what I saw a little bit of that. So Nolan first got interested because he had a friend that was interested
in the arab of extraterrest real life. And so that's how Nolan, you know, got connected. He actually contacted Greer himself and said, you know, he was a scientist and instead of the other way around, he wasn't contacted by them, he contacted them directly, you know. And I know he actually looked at there's another article out there where he speaks to it the Child, the Star Child's Skull, and this was a few years ago. Yeah, he did, and he determined that was human as well, But
of course Lloyd Pie kind of threw out his information. And then once Lloyd Pie, the main investigator of that skull, passed away, Chase Kletzky took over that investigation and then she began from the beginning, So I don't I'm sure she was aware of Nolan's work, but she didn't reference it, and they did their own work and they also determined that this skull was human.
So well, since we're on this subject, did you happen to hear like the latest on that other that the latest thing that HEIMI was involved in. I can't remember the name of the organization. Attention to well him or and I don't mean to to you know, if you like Gaya, that's great, but Gaya has not shown any inkling of actually being interested in doing real research either or talking to true experts. So I don't really pay attention to
Guya Gaya or him honestly. So well, it's too bad, in my opinion, it's too bad that so many people do you know, and there's nothing that you know, you and I that we both try to have shows that are well, you know, interesting, and we don't go way off the fringe, and it just seems like it's it's too bad because you know, someone may stumble across that and just you know, buy into it, and a lot of people do. A whole lot of people do. And
I guess what can you do about that? You know, all we can do is share information that is sourced incredible and not everybody to else do their own things. That's all we can do. That's right, which reminds me. There was a story recently on from the New York Meg New York magazine about thirteen reasons to believe aliens are real? Did you read that? Yeah,
so, which is kind of weird. You know, this is a big magazine and they put this together and it was in sections, so they had you know, lots of different areas of like exoplanets, but they also
covered this latest DoD thing. Leslie was a little disappointed. She felt that they didn't cover it, you know, and the correct manner in that, you know, she said, I never said anything about aliens in my New York Times article, which she did, so, but you know, this is all kind of a new area and a learning curve also for these a lot of these people in the media, and it turns out that one of my buddies, who you know, I travel with at these press junkets,
was one of the writers of that article. So we literally just had breakfast with him, not even an hour ago, not even half an hour ago, And so it's kind of funny. He said he didn't do any of the UFO stuff. He only did the exoplanets portion, so we can't blame him for that part. That at least that was inaccurate. But it's pretty cool though that the article really was kind of a little bit of tongue and tongue in cheek, but a lot of reasons why, you know, they
say we should take it seriously, So that was kind of cool. Yeah. Overall, I think it was a good thing people think, and I think that's one of the reasons our panel was so packed, is that all of this news is really making people think more hardly about this topic. Yeah, I think so. I felt like your your attendance, that your conference was up too, you know, and there were people that I hadn't seen
in the previous years. Yeah. I think the percentage of people who had never been to a UFO Congress conference was a little bit higher this year than before. It's always pretty high at the Congress, but it seems like it
was a bit higher this time, right, right. So another article that's come out, and people may have seen this because this story has kind of been going on out there, is that there was this aircraft or two aircraft over in the Phoenix area that saw UFO and asy sent I believe it was one of the Arizona newspapers had a story in it today talking about it,
and now they still haven't figured out what it was. That essentially they got a response from the FAA, and the FAA says, we don't have any more information than you can hear in this audio which was released of the pilots talking about the situation, and they say we have no more information. And in that audio, these guys essentially saw something above them, couldn't figure out
what it was. The control tower said there was nothing on radar, and you know, someone even said must be a UFO and that was it. So kind of intres commercial commercial airline, Yeah, at least one was. They were American Airlines. AOL has a story on it today as well as the Huffington Post. That's who else. The object was at forty thousand feet and yeah, so AOL and Huffington Post have stories on this, and you can hear the audio. The incident occurred on February twenty fourth. Well,
I'm actually surprised that they released the audio. Yeah, did you say the FAA actually released them. I'm not sure who released the audio. Actually, somebody else had retrieved that audio. I don't know that it says, but one of the aircraft was an American Airlines passenger jet. I believe I told you that. I sat next to a pilot that was an air Force pilot originally but now he's an American Airlines pilot, and he and I had a
conversation about UFOs and he didn't he was scared. He said he wouldn't talk about it publicly, really, you know. So, yeah, he was in a fifteen eighteen what are they hornet, Yeah, eighteen eighteen when he had his encounter that he never reported to anyone. He just checked on radar and it wasn't on radar. Hmmm, that's pretty interesting. But he said, you know, he didn't want to talk about it publicly. You know. I actually asked him on my show and he said he wouldn't even come
on anonymously. Wow, he's just afraid of his job, losing his job, and that's I'm hoping that's gonna that's going to stop since you know, since the release of the knowledge of the Pentagon looking into it. Yep. So one other story out there which is interesting too is that there has been a detection and I think this one might be the strongest, they say, of another one of those fast radio bursts from deep space and they still go
unexplained. So people may remember this that there have been these signals that have been detected. There were some, there's been only a handful over the years.
But then there was a breakthrough through breakthrough the breakthrough initiatives started by the Russian Yuri Melner, who has put some money into the kind of the SETI project of searching for extraterrestrial intelligence, and he spent some money in some radar issues, you know, to listen for stuff, and they captured a bunch more of these fast radio bursts, and then just recently they caught another one, so just in the last few weeks. So people are still curious as
to what these may be. There were in the original group, you know, they discovered some of them were were a microwave from this one place, I think it was in Australia where they were listening and at the same time. Every day, you know, they would catch them and it turned out to be just a microwave. But all of these new ones that they've been finding, they haven't been able to discover what they are, and they've been captured by different dishes across the world, so now they usually for the most
part, it's kind of like UFO sightings. You know, most of them can be described as something you know, natural or you know, have an explanation. That's kind of how I feel about the radio bursts and signals that they find. They usually seem to figure it out what it is, even though it's something they may have not ever heard before, so to speak. Heard, but it usually ends up being something weird out in space. And there's still probably a lot more to be discovered. So what are you saying?
This is nothing stuff? This is going to turn out to be nothing. It could be. It's possible, man. We have to we have to have to, you know, be prepared for that burst in our bubble, aren't you? As always? I think I had a nickname for that. Oh yeah you did, Yeah, I'm already down or something I forgot that was last week. All right, Well, that's it for the news and we're actually out of time, so thank you very much for joining us,
Martin, thank you. We'll be right back after this christ commercial break if you're listening to kg R A, or after a short musical interlude if you're listening to the podcast with our round table with Ben and Mark and Karen and myself at Treeport in Boise. So we'll be right back after this commercial. Welcome to Open Mind UFO Radio. I'm your host, Alejandro Rojas, and I am here. We are here at Hackfort semi live. I mean, we're recording it live, so but we recorded all the shows live,
so you can hear people and stuff in the background. Kind of a fun ambiance. But I'm here with Mark de Antonio, Ben Hansen and the lovely Karen Bard. I can say that, I guess because you're my significant other otherwise, oh I better say so. Yeah, So okay, of course Hackford is part of the larger Tree Fort here in Boise, Idaho. Yeah,
so I was gonna explain. We're in Boise, Idaho at something called Tree Fort and it's a music festival or a rich it was, and then they created these other forts kind of like south By Southwest was there, Uh, kind of their inspiration and they have a yoga fort, a food for it, and a comedy for it, and uh, we're part of hack Fort. So they asked I was doing a tech media talk and or a
panel, and they asked what else would be kind of cool? And I told him UFOs and they wanted to do a UFO tech So who did I immediately think of markd' antonio and Ben Hansen. I thought you one of two other guys, but then you settled for us. Isn't that what it was? Well, originally I thought of John Smith and no just kidding, no, no, no, no, you are primary and luckily you guys made
it. So let's go around the table and we'll go first to Mark, and we'll start off with your what you thought of the experience, because what I thought was unique about this This is kind of a post Alizondo or post DoD story of speaking to a non UFO. Kind of grew about UFOs and we had a packed house and I think that I feel maybe that's because of that New York Times story in recent relevations. I think people seem to feel like maybe it's okay to be interested in UFOs. I have to agree with
that. Actually, you know what, when I walked in there, I saw like ten people sitting, and then you know, I figured, all right, we'll probably get maybe twenty because UFOs aren't necessarily something that will bring that out, you know, bring people out of the woodwork. But you know, that's that was my perspective. But the problem is that we don't
know what people are thinking and what they're seeing. And I was proven wrong when not only did the house get full, every seat taken, but there were people sitting on every table around the room as a seat, and the stools and everywhere else and there were all there's still people standing and I couldn't believe that. I mean, that was a fantastic, fantastic outcome. I
was amazed. You know. So now that the technology here, I mean there's all kinds of people doing three D printed stuff, there's virtual reality stuff. It's really cool. That's the hack fork part. And of course there's all the music that's going on elsewhere. You can hear music in the background. But for me, I figured, well, you know, I'll go, but who knows what it'll be like. But it turned out to be more successful than I could ever have thought. Yeah, it's good to Ben
first and then then we'll go to you, honey. Yeah, I agree. I think that it's always interesting when you go to these events that are not UFO specific and trying to see how did people hear about it, what was their interest level. And we didn't really survey the room to see how many people had heard of the d O D you know, like a revelation this year, but because it was such a big year for UFOs, I think it's been more in the news and people have been thinking about it.
I did kind of gaze and look at people's eyes, though, and a lot of them were nodding their heads like yeah, yeah, yeah, we've heard this stuff. So they're they're indoctrinated, I guess you could say.
And they're not fresh newbies a lot of them. So you didn't feel like you had to step back and explain the whole history of where we've come from, you know, with a project blue book and going way back, because that's always a concern of mine, is that you start talking too technical with people who don't go to these conferences specifically for UFOs, and you know, start with like wow, but fourteen percent of people see objects that are what is a UFO? You know? I was like, so I'm glad we
could just kind of jump into it. They seem to be really getting it, liking it, and we had a large diversity of different backgrounds there. So we'll ask Karen, who was in the audience, what did you were you surprised? I don't know if I was surprised, I don't know. I've had any expectations, but I was just really happy to see the turnout and the fact that it was supposed to be an hour and you guys, it went on for two hours. So what I really liked is how well
Ben said. You know, they weren't They seemed to know a lot of stuff, but I think most of these people probably were Internet. They got their information from the Internet. So it was really nice to see this age group. I mean, we're talking teenagers to twenty somethings mostly, and we
just don't see that at a lot of conferences. So it was really nice to actually see these guys out and about and I think they were excited because they've read all this stuff on the internet, but they haven't really had a chance to go see a speaker, see or talk about it in public. So I think a lot of these people might have been one of their first UFO talks in public, and they were really excited that it wasn't just on the internet. And I think that's why they all stayed for an extra hour
asking questions, and they would have probably staid for another hour. That was very interesting how there was several people in the audience that ask questions that were as good or better than what you would find from the quote unquote knowledgeable UFO people that you would talk to. And that means to me and the sheer numbers that were in that talk that we did, the sheer numbers told me that this is a group of people, this age group, as you said,
twenty somethings, Karen, that actually has a thirst for this kind of knowledge. And that's something very important that tells us that our job is far from done. We've got a long way to go, and I think it might have been And you know, maybe Ben, you could speak to this because you probably do more of this than the rest of us. Is that panel format. I think it's important for younger people, I think they want
to interact more. They want to ask questions and have more back and forth as opposed to like what we do at the Congress, which the old folks like, which is the lectures where you know, for an hour and a half or an hour, somebody is, you know, imparting some great stuff that they figured out, but it's longer and it's not as interactive, whereas it seems like the younger guys like the interactive and this say, is kind of a more comic con type style. Yeah, that's a great observation.
I've done a number of these four comic cons, and you know, we'll get several people who've done TV shows on the subjects and get them up there, and they it's a little bit more entertainment. You gotta kind of keep the crowd engaged a little bit. They don't like to sit there and just watch power points, and that is kind of the new way to gather information. They want to hear your opinion, but they kind of tune out if you're just forced feeding them. So yeah, this is kind of a great
interactive way, but it is different. I mean, when you come with us specific lecture in mind, like this is what we're going to learn about. You know, they're like, well, great, we're in school again. Yeah, because I think in their lives they're just more used to interacting because if they do things online, they're commenting online, they're interacting with the
other people in school. They have to interact with their clickers at school, so they're they're constantly like when they go to college, you have to buy a clicker now, and they ask questions and you have to answer with your clicker. Oh yeah, so they can make sure that you're there. It's
a way to take attendance. So yeah, that's an I mean when because when we went to college, we didn't have to go and we could still get an a. But you can't do that anymore because I think adults, adults were you know, parents were like, my kids aren't even going to school. We need to do something about that. So they came up with a way to make kids go to school now. But they're just used to
being more interactive in their daily lives. So and they have a ton of question It's really funny that all of us sold are like, what clickers they have to ask questions? Not old, you're the oldest person at this table. But look, let me live with my delusion please. But Karen has two kids in college right now, so she would know the younger people listening to this are probably like those boneheads didn't know about clickers. Yeah, that's
hilarious, But I think you know that is the key. And you know people are always asking how do you get the younger people involved? How you get the younger people involved? And it was kind of funny. My cousin Jason worked out a college and he started a college paranormal group and in move On, we were in Denver where Twich move On headquarters was there and they wanted to interact more. He found that more people were involved and more people
came if they did more interactive things. We brought that to move On and move On's like, no, no, I mean, why would we want these people who don't know anything, you know, being part of the talk. They need to listen to us and learn from us who know everything, So they weren't willing to make those changes. So you know, those of us who are in this field need to adapt in order to reach out to this these groups. That's why I think something like this is a really good
way to get out there and get some information out. When it came to the other thing, which you said that people knew bits and pieces of different stuff, I think that's really interesting too, because it kind of means that maybe information about this topic is permeating out there more than we may even know into the public. I mean, it is part of social media and games and stuff like that. Do you guys think that may be the case.
Well, my experience is that it is the case that a lot of the popular cultural shows and movies deal with the subjects, and it has had an effect, a significant effect. There are people that talk about UFOs now that never have before it came to this festival. I had two people call me that have no concept of UFOs and say, hey, I saw a spot on the news about UFOs. It was this, this, and this and
that. We're talking about the UFO sighting. So they're coming out of the woodwork to talk about it, which means they're being inundated with it in their news cycle. And that's actually promising. And if you talked about before, and everyone at this table knows that you know the answer, the way,
we're gonna make sure that we're not regarded as tinfoil hat wearing freaks. When we talk about UFOs is when science catches up and says, well, yeah, science believes that there may be alien life that could be as intelligent as ours. Right now, we don't have that answer. What science believes now is that we have life out there. That's me. I'm an astronomer. We know that. So I talk about life elsewhere. No one's going to disagree with that. What they disagree with is whether they can be here,
whether they've reached intelligence. See, those are big things, and then finally whether that would that capability, could they also move to different star systems and have you know, will the same species show up everywhere else or somewhere else? Are we one of those species? You know, we might just be
a zoo for all and we will be a zoo. Well. One of the most popular television shows on right now is X Files, and just watching the X Files, they talk about Roswell and just recently they had some of those geeky kids that might watch every episode in you know, deconstruct it. There was like a cell phone message on one of the phones talking about Lee Spiegel's U n uh think about but that episode. But there was also the
yeah about the Granada un thing way back and it's talked about Alexando. So you know our popular television shows are giving kids away to see things and then go investigate them, just figure out what they were. Ye. Yeah, I slowed down the I paused. I was like, wait a second, because on Moulder's phone you had to look at it carefully. It said something like, uh, don't tell them anything about project blah blah blah, h Reid or whatever is like Harry's names, like yeah, yeah, and advancing
the threat program project if they deny everything. Yeah, yeah, that was that was interesting. So and Chris Carter has always been good about working that stuff into there, so I mean he keeps up on it. But that's been my the my main frustration with with trying to get this information out is that not just the millennials, but we all now have become grazers of information. We browse. We don't you know, We'll we'll pick up a little me or something online and like oh yeah I heard that, you know,
the White House did this? And do we actually click and read the full article? I think stats which other most people don't and they don't source it, and so who knows where they're getting information. And you know, the term fake news works on both sides of the political spectrum, so it's like we're getting little pieces of hearing about the Navy had a program, the DD had a program, but do people explore it. That's my frustration is like, you know, I know there's so much info out there, but pick
up a book. Whatever happened with reading first about the knowledge base that others have built for us. Let's see where we came from. Then start forming your opinions. You know, we rely too much on Wikipedia and all this, so that when people come to these events all they might know is pop culture. They want to know more, but how many really put in the effort, you know, to who knows? I mean, that's just it's just the way it is now. Yeah, that's a really good point.
And it's funny you say that too, because the first comic con we did was a Denver comic con that I ever had a table, and I had a Colorado moofon table there. And speaking of the X files, X Files was on the air back then, and everybody was shocked that Moufon was real. They thought it was made up from the X files because it was mentioned in an X Files episode, but we were like every time we were there, we were the most popular table because once people realize mufon was real,
they're like, oh my gosh. And then we had a map with you know, where the UFO sightings were in Colorado, so people love that. So they're all coming talking about UFOs and discovering, Wow, there really are people out looking too this stuff, which is pretty cool. But the reading of the stories is a big deal. You know. In the other panel that I was part of, it was the media panel, and it was kind of how do you pitch a story to media? And all of it
we're kind of talking about. Sadly, we realize most people will read our headlines and not click on the link to read this story, and I just feel like they get the gist from the headlines. So our point was to people who are pitching stories, think of the headline and don't write your press release more than maybe a couple of paragraphs. It's got to be small on a concept and you got to think about a hot topic that's going to be in the headlines. So, unfortunately, you're right, which gets me back
to your question. Actually, yeah, you you talked about how you know, people are starting to talk about how aliens are probably real. There are aliens out there. Science is talking about that, but I always wonder, of course SETI is like, but they're not here because they're too far away.
But I'm not sure the public understands that. I kind of feel like when the scientists are out there saying ets are probably real, and I think the polls reflect this, that people don't understand the nuances because they haven't read the details, are read the whole story, so they kind of feel like this whole idea of UFOs is kind of mixed in on it, and that could be some of why people are more open to the topic. That's an interesting point, and but let's consider that for a minute. If you think
about what SETI has done. Study says Shostak's done a wonderful job. They're trying to use that neutral hydrogen twenty one centimeter band. That's a narrow band frequency in the universe that's not populated by a whole lot of natural phenomena, so it makes perfect sense to try and use that band to try and communicate. But they're communicating at the speed of light. They're sending out signals that are traveling at the speed of light one hundred and eighty six thousand miles per
second. That's seven times around the Earth in one second, So it seems like that's pretty fast, But at that speed, it still takes four point three years to get to the nearest star Alpha Centauri system, right, So what that means to me is that light speed is too slow, oh, because it'll take one hundred years for a signal to go one hundred light years and then if somebody responds, hey, hey, how you doing like a wave, it's gonna take a hundred years for that to come back. As
a civilization, Are we gonna be vigilant? Are we gonna be listening? Are we gonna still be, you know, in the same mode we were in when we sent them message, like we want to see if there's somebody out there. Is there gonna be someone one hundred years from now, then two hundred years from the return trip that's gonna be I'm still listening for you to come back, you know. I mean, so light speed is not the best way. And when when you talk about a civilization, that's that's
trying to get to get to us. We've only been around as a reasoning civilization, reasoning beings for if you think about our history maybe for the last fifteen twenty thousand years, okay, all right, And so in that situation, with that being the case, we already see as a as this young civilization in the universe, and we are young, okay, we already see the possibility of going interstellar in just like one hundred or two years, one
hundred or two hundred years and getting to the nearest star and not twenty thousand years or nineteen thousand years like it might take now with our fastest speed, but in two weeks. And that's taking it easy because the technology could get us there faster, but it could cause detrimental effects. So imagine that.
We already see that. So clearly there's another civilization out there that may have already surpassed that and gone far past it to other propulsion techniques, things that Michio Kaku, for instance, will discuss and string theory, and these could take us anywhere in the universe in minutes. And that sounds like pure science fiction, and for us it is right now, well, Mark uh, everyone knows it's warp speed, not light speed. Well, and that's that's
the thing. That's that's which you know, when you know, we send a message and wait for a response. By the time the message gets there, our technology will away already be you know, far surpassing. And of course, if they're using propulsion systems that are able to jump between dimensions or you know, fold space time, then delivering the message in person is even
going to be quicker. And then there's also the possibilities of course of we just watched Wrinkle and Time and that, which was one of my favorite books as a kid, and the concept of being able to your mind being able to travel these distances, which could be a possibility. I mean, a lot of the people investigating consciousness, even physicists, are figuring there's perhaps a component at the quantum level that our minds might be able to access, which
of course can move those vast, vast distances. If you look at in a sense, aren't we a container for that consciousness? So if we learn how to breach the container, you could transfer it from one container to another possibly, or transfer it to a different medium maybe you know, take it to the universe and beyond or whatever. I mean, there's you know, it's just science to me. It's potential science we don't understand and don't know
yet, So that's a science undiscovered. It's sort of what I call it. Yeah, so the potential is endless with that, so what the public knows. And that's what's interesting though, is that, I mean moving into this world and I think that I feel like we're adjusting and you've got to be ahead of the game. And I think some people in this field are reticent to move because they like to be feel like they're in a you know,
kind of elite group. We're the only people in the know. But if this stuff becomes to be more publicly accepted, then we're not you know, then I embrace that. But I think a lot of people are hesitant to move there because they don't want it to be out for everybody. They want to keep it to them selves. I don't know, Ben, do you think that's a component that they they want to keep the knowledge for themselves, Like, yeah, you know, so that the UFO some people in
the UFO community, I want to keep it just the UFO community. Okay, Well, well, I don't know. I don't know that I've really seen that. Yeah, it's kind of it's it's kind of hard to say. I think that, how do you feel about this topic being more universally accepted? Oh well, I would love this topic more universally accepted because then you know, I wouldn't be the odd person in the party. I mean, it's still when I was well, yeah, I mean I was a
kid, I always say this. It was like it's very taboo, and I was very embarrassed to talk about it. And and I find myself being okay now on a flight sitting next to somebody like, well, what do you do? And I'm like, I lecture about this, like, oh, I don't care if they give me a slightly weird look, because most of them don't, you know, So I can talk about it in most settings because I think we've arrived at that point where it's usually socially acceptable.
You still get the occasional person, you know, mocking, but that's kind of I guess the main reason. I'd like to see it more and more out there, and the more people get talking about it, then then we have more I don't really like to call it a social movement, but we have to to have that leverage in order to change whatever policies might you know, we need to do to get more disclosure, to do all those things, and if people aren't talking about it, the government does not care to
fix problems unless there's enough people whining, complaining, protesting putting pressure on them. They just don't. All right, we're actually out of time for this segment, so we'll take a short break. So for those of you listening on KGr A, you're gonna hear some commercials from some great sponsors who keep KGr A on the air, so check them out. Otherwise, those of you listening to the podcast will hit a short musical interlude, so stay tuned.
We'll be back with Mark D'Antonio, Karen Brard, and Ben hurts Er. Stay tuned. All right, we are back with Open Mind UFO Radio here at Hackfort, which is part of Tree Fort in Boise. That's how they say. I heard the local say Boise idahoy where Boyce. I heard boys also so and we were talking about this topic being more socially acceptable. Oh you, and Karen wants to set the mood for people. I just want ever to have a chance to see where we're sitting in the middle of
a room, around circular room, and everywhere we look around. There's people doing virtual reality games. So we see people with these headsets on and have things in their hand, and there's like they're all over the room doing these
virtual reality reality games. So it's very futuristic in here There go. And we were talking about the public accepting UFOs in this UFO ish environment that we're in right now, and Mark had some comment, Yeah, it's kind of interesting because when I get on a plane to fly someplace, and it's not like I fly once every few months. I fly fairly often, or I take a trip and go to another place and talk to people elsewhere. The bottom line is, they asked me, you know, well, what do
you do? I asked them, and they say, oh, they're this or that, and then they ask me what do you do? And I say, oh, I investigate UFOs. I'm the chief photo vide Wenaly. It's for one of the largest UFO organizations on the planet. And you used to get greeted with oh, and then they turn away and you know, put the thing over their eyes and go to sleep or whatever. But now I get you know, when I was younger, I saw and now you
hear their story. The stories are so prevalent throughout the people that they just never tell them. Okay, but they're so prevalent. There's an untapped plethora of stories out there that I think are really just phenomenal. I listened to this one older gentleman telling me about a sighting he had that changed his life, and I said, oh, have you ever told anybody about it? He goes, actually no, he says, I never knew who to tell, but you seem to be the person to tell. I said, well,
I'm one of many. But yeah, that's really cool, you know. But I think that the whole culture is changing and people are starting to open up to that. So I think UFOs as just strange mystical objects has sort of come to an end, and now UFOs as potential envoys from distant stars and occupants advanced civilizations that can live and die and suffer consequences the same way as us. I think that's coming to fruition. I think that's what's
happening. Yeah, you know, I was the reason we're here is because I do these this articles on science and entertainment and stuff like that, and so that's why they asked me to come. Because a mutual friend of mine who I go around on these things with asked me to be part of the panel on that and then. But what was funny is I was really hesitant to share with these people my UFO interests. And I've always been hesitant in
professional environments to share my UFO interests. Of course, I'm always outed, and with this group, I was a little surprised they were really into it and cool about it, you know, like Jennifer who invited me and ultimately
got us all here. She writes for Forbes, but she's really into it, and you know, one day I'll talk to her because she hasn't written a story only because you know, she needs to find the credible information and source it and she's checking on it and she'll have a story coming out. But it's funny, So now I'm kind of out with my UFO stuff with these these kind of writers and stuff. I was hesitant to go there with and I've always been as a tent, but Karen's less as a tent.
And it's funny because she'll tell people or she'll talk with her family and then I get embarrassed and I'm like, no, no, don't talk about that. But now that it's kind of her career. Because she owns the conference, she's, for better or worse, not shy to wear her alien sweaters and T shirts and stuff. Even though her dad is not into this. He was actually what a major colonel in the Air Force, and he's you know, definitely looks down his nose at this sort of thing. Although he's
pretty cool about it. He's better about it now that we're more friendly. Alien T shirt to the general. Oh really, so here say that on the air. But I also want to ask you. I mean, you don't seem to be shy about you know, you're owning the UFO conference. Why and do you think have you had any negative repercussions from family or otherwise. Well, I'm not shy to because it's not it's science. It's something that's happening out in our world. People are seeing it, and I believe
them. So I'm going to report it, and I'm going to give people a venue to report what they see. And people who haven't interested it. So I think it's that I don't want to perpetuate the taboo, and by being shy, that would be perpetuating it. That oh it's not okay to talk about it. I should be embarrassed, and I don't feel that that's true. And what was your other question, Oh, my dad, Yeah, I think it's so funny. Of course, you know I was wrong
and stupid and stuff before I started going out with Alejandro. But then because my parents always find more credibility in my significant other than me, So now that it's you know, you're believing it, and then it's okay to believe in it. And he actually is wearing an alien one of my alien t shirts to the gym now, so that is going from zero to one hundred. So I got to give him credit for at least supporting me. That's
hilarious. So and then next, you know, one thing I want to get into with you with especially with you two Mark and Ben, is I haven't had you guys on the show since the New York Times article. So I'm curious about your takes because some people might know. Mark has had put, of course his critical eye to some of these videos. I think some people may think that you're kind of calling question to the whole program. He doesn't like me using the word debunker, although, like I've explained before on
my show, I think at debunker is a good thing. It's someone who's trying to critically analyze stuff. So what is your overall feeling about the news that's come out. Well, you know, you look at the New York Times article and the other releases by To the Stars Academy and the d O D and what you notice is that, well, the big news to me, even the bottom line of the video is the video didn't really tell us much. But it's one part of the story, and so you have to
let it stand on its own. If it doesn't stand on its own, you have to move on to the next part of that story to see what else can stand on its own. Well, in these cases, all these releases, all three of them, did not stand on their own to me, right, whatever else comes along, we'll see, all right. And because we only see one tiny little piece of video from an overall video that
went from for many minutes or more so. But my take on that is that you just have to keep maintaining a critical eye on the thing that you are a specialist about. If you try to deviate. If I tried to go down to voice analysis to try and figure out what the pilots were real or not, I'm not qualified to decide if they are. I have an opinion of that based on what I'm hearing, but my opinion is slanted by everything else I know that I didn't learn from other specialists in that arena.
Perhaps you have to be careful about that. Your opinions are formed out of your preconceived notions, and that's the thing that kills a lot of people this way, preconceived notions. You have to go into this open and otherwise you will make incorrect assumptions and you will end up becoming you know, well, you'll end up going down the wrong path basically. And then I also want your perspective though, on the idea the revelation now that indeed the government has
been looking into UFOs. Actually I forgot to mention that that's actually a very important thing. The biggest revelation that came out of all this is the revelation itself the government has been looking into these. It was a sponsored government program when they had always been saying they weren't looking, and now we know they were. Now there's two reasons for that. Perhaps one, they were keeping it secret the whole time, and they're not going to share, not going
to share, not going to share. You know, go through that whole classification thing. The other reason potential is that they didn't know what some of the other branches of the service were doing, or they didn't know about these programs, and so when they make an announcement from one agency, well, that agency doesn't speak for everybody, although they may think they do, and that could have been part of the problem. So maybe we just never heard
about it because it was being kept quiet within that one agency. Then when Alessando got the stuff out and brought the stuff to light, that changed everything. And then the government says, oh, yeah, we've been investigating UFOs, and they probably look at each other and go, apparently, you know, they don't really know for sure. Yeah, good point that I think is the Yeah, one of the biggest revelations is how disorganized this seems to
be. I mean, it's like, I wasn't so shocked that they were officially investigating something, but to the rest of the world when it comes out, it's like the twenty four hour news cycle. It just amazes me so much how you could come out with this big scandal anything. Now, any any you know, government agency can have a scandal against it and within a couple of days or weeks, it's like, gone, this is like twenty two million dollars, which isn't big to the government, but you know it's
like over several years. Oh yeah, guys. You know, they they micro analyze everything the government does, right, and people, you know, this outcry of like why are we spending money on you know, trying to save the desert tortoise? You know, we can't build land here or there whatever, And here's twenty two million dollars where I didn't really hear people complaining so much that we spent it looking for aliens, which was just weird to
me. You know, yeah, it's it is good, but it's like that both sides of political spectrum, they're just kind of like, well, that's it's kind of weird. But okay, twenty two million dollars who cares, right, But but yet us within the UFO community and it's like, okay, well, we want some some fiduciary responsibility here, what did you do with it? You got people like George Knapp saying, okay, we've established you were doing it. Now that information belongs to us, right,
because you, for the most part aren't saying that the program's classified. So you say you have materials they were tested in big A Low's basement or something like. What was the result of that? Tell us. If there's nothing to it and you close down the program, then tell us. And I think it's our money. We deserve to know. And that's where I don't really see people with the outcry of that. Either it's just people like George
Knapp or people are like, look, guys, here's the implication. We had a study, they said it was official, So are we any closer? Yeah, those are really great points because they have you know, the media, and most people have accepted and I think they only can conceive of that the higher level. Okay, the government looked into UFOs, they found it's a legitimate thing. They spent twenty two million. That sounds like about
how much it would cost. We're done, whereas of course those of us geeks UFO geeks are scrambling for the details and dying for the details, and so we need to deats and we don't have any documents yet. But I mean, this is a really positive thing, that the fact that yeah, there were some people saying, oh I don't believe it, but nobody was saying how dare they spend all this money on UFOs. Nobody was saying that. People were saying, oh wow, that's cool. Like so people accepted
it. So the government probably should feel very safe. And if they decided, yeah, let's start a public you know, out in the open UFO department, I don't think anyone would care. I mean, I think people would be for it. Now I agree with that. Next, I think that you're right because I mean, for many years people have supported the mutual UFO network. UH. And for many years people have been attending you know, the the UH, the International UFO Congress and many other UFO related conferences.
Okay, yet your attendance hasn't been dropping at all, you know you, Your attendance has been going up if anything. So I think that this points out that the public is interested. And if you look at most of
the blockbuster movies, half of them are alien space related. So this is something that people are interested in. Now, I want to ask you guys this, what if the government opens and new for lack of a better you know example, a new project blue book, a new public facing organization that then is going to have to deal with the pr kind of aspect of this. Uh. Your thoughts on that. I knew you're gonna ask this because this is what we talked about yesterday. And I don't have much hope in
it. Look at look at what a feel good kind of a front agency you know, Bluebook was program. It was like, we're doing something about it. Guys, we know you're scared. We got it under control. But we all know what it was. It was. But they also expected answers, I think, you know, and to the end of it, and when the Condon report comes out and all that, they basically well, there's only a couple handful of things we couldn't figure out otherwise, not a
threat national security the end, you know. And I have no hope, no expectation they're gonna come up with anything different this time. That's what the government has been telling us forever, forever. I don't need them to tell me it's a threat. I don't care to be honest, you know, because no, we were not seeing our ships blown out of the sky, our our jets. So what are they going to say to that. No, it's it's they're not going to come with it on conclusion. What I
want to know is, what have you known? What have you been keeping from us. And if you don't know, that's fine, Let's sit down, let's talk about it. Let's talk about, you know, something such as roswell, and let's stop the bs. Let's stop going back to changing it every time. You know, their story doesn't hold water. If it really was just one of our top secret projects, prove it to me. You know, that's what I want to hear from a new agency, someone
that comes along from here on out. Let's be above board. But I think we also need to reevaluate everything that the Brookings Institute study said about, you know, utter chaos and the destruction of society, because we don't know that anymore. I think we are in a different time, and if we don't have the answers, I think it's okay for the government to start coming forward and say, look, guys, last night, our jets were scrambled.
We'd chase something. It was weird, go back to watching the Kardashians. Okay, but but at least we're being honest with you, you know, And let's start with that first. And then if ultimate disclosure does happen, it's not a complete shock that we're you know, in the dark about it. That is a great point. Do you have what about you? Yeah, a new agency, Mark, what would you have a feeling about
that? Well, if there was a new agency out there, then I would probably say I'm no longer moving to Arizona because I'm going to put in my application with them. Uh, and then of course go all over the place. There's actually I currently have a potential opportunity to to through some someone that I don't even know actually, but it's a benefactorial type thing to go around and do these different investigations all over the place. And I hope that
actually comes to fruition because that would be very very cool. I'd like to do that. But a new agency, you know, again, it comes down to under the auspices of whom who is going to be monitoring this agency and deciding what the agency can then release. And we're back to the same thing. It has to be something that's not an agency per se. It
has to be an organization that has a lot of power. So an organization perhaps operated by an Elon Musk or Richard Branson, that makes up an organization to actually produce results, you know, and isn't beholding to the government maybe you know, well, I know that to the Stars Academy was that idea. It has a lot of very important people in it, people that were in the in this arena Karen mentioned to the Stars Academy. I think that's
important. That's a start, you know, But there's nobody in that organization that is a front person that actually has a lot of power. There's people that have the eye and ear of a popular culture, but you see, there's no one with a lot of power and money up there. See if and Elon Musk was doing this, the face of two of the Stars, for instance, would be very different than what we see now. There'd be
a lot more formalization. There'll be a lot more investigation, there be a lot more analysis, to be a lot more of data, I'm sure. And Karen wants to talk. She's reaching and she's grabbing the phone. That's hurting me. They're lying, but I mean, yeah, to the Stars Academy, their goal is to do all that researching and you know, and money, well, and they're getting there, they're trying and everybody, you know, it is a corporation that you can buy shares in and be a
part of if you feel that that's something you want to do. But I mean that's their you know, a goal is to start doing investigations. All right, Well, surprisingly we are pretty much out of time already. Oh so, you know what I would be happy with, especially thinking of what you all said, and maybe this would be the most practical approach for the government is to at least come up with some new memos instead of these bs. You know, we're not interested in UFOs. We shut down the program
in nineteen sixty nine. We haven't looked at UFO since, which is just a total flat out lie. At least modifying their statement on UFOs to be accurate that, yes, we have had some cases, we've investigated those, we are looking into it. Thus far, we don't have maybe any reason for alarm, but we do keep an eye on these things, which is the truth and would be accurate. And then they don't even have to create a department. They can maintain their current and you know, structures and levels
of secrecy. But at least that would be nice. And I think I would nominate you to be the new government spokesperson for the company for that. Oh, thank you, honey, Now I'm blushing, all right, Well, thank you guys so much for joining me. And this has been a great weekend. We'll have a lot more fun. We'll probably have some pictures.
Oh yeah, Karen talked about how cool it is here, and there's this little screen that you can move around in front of it and it kind of makes you look like this seventies music video, and so you can see Mark. I think those kind of things these movements he was doing were dancing or at least moving across the screen. I think it was more like some kind of seizure or something I was having. I do want to mention one
thing though, Outside this place, this is a really cool place. Not just inside is pretty cool, okay, but outside, yeah, it does Bois rocks Man, because outside there's a slide you can go down, big, gigantic slide many stories tall, and you know the bean bangua. You slide down and then you've got a spiral slide that goes down five stories and it's clear you go first. So market's excited about the slides and the swings and the stuff like that. Did you have any final comment, Ben,
No, not really. I think no. I would. I would like to see just more people coming to these conferences, no matter what they are, because it's like a town hall meeting is kind OF's talk about it and get people together and like minded and sure ideas. All right, Oh yeah, board games are back where. That's one thing that I discovered, although we should have known because your girls played board games with their friends, so
it's kind of interesting. It's the social thing is getting back to board games, including D and D and stuff. That was super geeky. All right, thanks guys, Thank you so much. To Mark D'Antonio, the mouf On photo and video analyst. He also has a website, FX Models because he makes really cool models, even for the defense, for TV commercials,
movies, all kinds of cool stuff. To Ben Hansen also who you can just google his name and find him, but he does night Vision Optics where he sells night vision equipment he does like the night vision skywatches at the UFO Congress. And to Karen Brard who owns the UFO Congress. But thank you all for joining me. That was a lot of fun. Tree Fort was a lot of fun. So thank you to those of you who were emboising
and came and checked us out. So that was really cool to see some of the listeners and some people who are familiar with the topic and with us who were able to join us and say hi and thank you to tree Fort, Genessa who helped us at tree Fort, and Jennifer Kite Powell, who was a person who got us there. So it was a lot of fun. Anyway, I want to say, there's some other cool stuff you should check out. All of the news at Martin of Podcast UFO I talked about
at the beginning of the show you can find at Openminds dot tv. Also the UFO Congress. We have the video portal for the Congress and we have lots of new videos up there. We have the Luise Alsando presentation, the entire thing. We have Travis Walton and that's an amazing talk with the first police officer who was on the scene and Travis Walton's brother. A lot of people said that was their favorite. I think Martin said that was his favorite.
And then we also have Susie Hansen up there who got a standing ovation, so she was a lot of people's favorite there at the Congress, and we'll have more and more going out. We're gonna have them going up fast and furiously. So go to the video portal. You can go to ufocongress dot com to find that and be sure to register. It's only a few bucks and you have access to hundreds of great lectures, including you know, ones like Bob Lazaar or Zakha Vala which are very rare. But I want
to thank Caleb Hanks for the opening end closed music. I want to thank Systematics for the pumper music, and I want to thank you the listener for being here. We'll have another show next week and until next time, Adio smooth Chuccos, you are mos.